


Shelter

by roryfox



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: 2004, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Angst, Heartbreak, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-10 13:55:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8919712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roryfox/pseuds/roryfox
Summary: In which Rhett and Link are members of the punk rock band Mythical Beasts on their first headlining tour in the Summer and Fall of 2004.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> These people are fabrications, the story based on nothing except music and the fact that I've been feeling inspired to write something dark.
> 
> There will be three parts to this story set in June, August, and October of 2004, respectively. Each will be inspired by a different rock album released in the month of that year (We Are Not Alone by Breaking Benjamin, Is A Real Boy by Say Anything, and Futures by Jimmy Eat World, respectively) and each chapter in the part will be inspired by a song from the album.
> 
> This story is, above all, about the music and about these two young men figuring out how they fit into each others lives. Let's see where it takes us.
> 
> Thank you to my roommate and best friend for beta-ing this entire piece. You're the Rhett to my Link (except you're the bottom and we have maybe 50% of the gay subtext they do).

Futile - Say Anything

_“Love! I shall not love, yet I’ll still sing about it._

_I hope it covers the ocean in slime, the drama and drool._

_I’m leaking the blood of a fool (I’m full of it, I’m full of it, I’m full.)”_

 

August, 2004. 

There is sweat on his brow, sticking his hair to his forehead as he tries, tries to ignore the crowd and the screaming and the way that his fingers ache from the guitar strings.

There is a light in his eyes no matter where he turns and can barely hear the rest of the music and has he missed his cue? He can’t remember when he’s supposed to come in with the harmony  and he’s playing strictly from muscle memory at this point.

Is Rhett looking at him? He can’t tell, can’t see, he should have put in his contacts or worn his glasses but he has a feeling things would still be blurry and hazy and uneasy.

He can’t breathe. Something hits him in the stomach and the wind is knocked out of him and suddenly everything is black and empty and exactly what it feels like in his gut.

He doesn’t remember falling but he must’ve because the music around him has stopped and the screaming is louder than it was and Greg (Will?) is hovering over him with his bass (so, yes, Greg) in his hands and Will has thrown his drumsticks to the side and is running over and Rhett, Rhett, Rhett is nowhere to be seen.

“Link, Link, buddy.” Greg is speaking to him and he can’t focus his eyes so he closes them. “You okay?”

“Here.” It’s Rhett’s voice but it’s so far away, miles and miles away, and something heavy and plastic is placed in Link’s hand. Water bottle.

Link opens his eyes but Rhett is already backing up, distancing himself, and Link wonders if he could lunge forward quick enough to grab him, to bring him down with him. But what would that accomplish? Nothing at all.

Nothing at all.

Because it’s all done now, all the damage is done.

He’s ruined the concert now but honestly in the grand scheme, does it matter? What’s one concert, one show, one set, one song. Rhett ruined _them_. Apparently the sentencing for the crime wasn’t Rhett’s death but his own.

Let the punishment fit.

“Come back to us here, Link.” It’s Greg and more screaming fans and if he doesn’t get up soon maybe he’ll just die here, or maybe he can will himself to hold his breath until he passes out again or if he focuses hard enough maybe could he seep through the floor and disappear.

Rhett has come back, reaching out his hand. It might as well be on fire.

Link closes his eyes again, the weight of his guitar on his chest not enough to crush him but oh how he wishes, how he wishes it was.


	2. So Cold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These people are fabrications, the story based on nothing except music. This chapter is specifically based on the Breaking Benjamin song "So Cold" from their 2004 album We Are Not Alone.

 

**Part One: June 2004**

 

“ _Show me how defenseless you really are_

_Satisfied and empty inside_

_Well, that’s alright, let’s give this another try.”_

 

"Link, Link." Rhett is snapping his fingers in front of his face. "Buddy, come back to me."

Link blinks a few times, looking down at the notebook in his hands. "Sorry, spaced out."

"Been doing that a lot lately, everything okay?"

It was the song writing. It didn't normally take this much out of him but now, now writing a chorus felt like someone was digging their fist into his gut and pulling. Surely their last album, their first album, hadn't been this hard. He barely remembered. But now that he thought about it, many of the songs had been taken from his freshman year journal, so the songwriting was a little bit more like revision as opposed to starting from scratch. It was tightening things up, making everything a little cleaner.

Changing pronouns (not that he told anyone that).

"Brother, hey, stop leaving me here." Rhett says, placing a hand on Link's shoulder. "Do you want to take a break?"

He wanted this to be fun again but instead he says "maybe some coffee."

( _Song idea: boy running on fumes_ )

"Do you not like the riff,  because I can change it." Rhett says, playing the same few chords Link's been hearing all morning. There isn't anything wrong with them (it's actually pretty good, even the one thousandth time) it's him. It's his lack of words.

"No, it's great. I'm just having trouble visualizing it." He rubs his eyes. "I might go for a walk."

"Want company?"

He shakes his head. "I just need some air, will be back in a flash." But Rhett is already looking down at his guitar again and fiddling with dropping the riff down. It sounds even better.

But how was that fair?

Link steps out and the humidity hits him in the face, as if he’s just stepped into an oven. He never thought he'd miss LA. And, really, he didn't. He didn't miss the smell or the people or the neighborhoods or the way it felt like everyone seemed to be in on an inside joke that he didn't understand.

But he did miss the weather. Or, at least, the lack of moisture in the air.

( _Song idea: where is home anyway?_ )

But Brooklyn, Brooklyn was alright. It had it's hip neighborhoods but also had the quiet ones with the townhouses he couldn't even think about without having at least a salary of half a million. It had children running around with nannies and dog walkers trying to hold three, four, sometimes five dogs at once and a Starbucks on every corner and an almost insane amount of small bookstores to peruse.

Rhett always had a way of being able to fit into places and find creative inspiration from nothing at all. He could pull a riff out of thin air. Sometimes Link even heard him humming in his sleep.

But Link wasn’t that way. He wasn’t able to sit down and tap into some inner part of him to write a song at his own beck and call. He had to be hit with something, had to be unexpecting. Had to just know.

This was fine when he was fifteen and writing for the fun of it. Now he was twenty two and writing because it was his life, it was his job, it was what kept him and Rhett and Will and Greg afloat.

With their first headlining tour starting before the end of the month, the pressure was a little more than he could take.

He’s been walking for a handful of blocks in no determined direction, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans and beads of sweat starting to form on his forehead. He runs his fingers through his hair and adjusts his glasses. How did he end up here? He was supposed to be in college getting an engineering degree, was supposed to be looking for the right girl (yes, _girl_ , he emphasizes to himself) to settle down with. But he was here on a random street in Brooklyn staying in the spare room of a friend of a friend of a second cousin (or something to that effect) writing the follow up to the album that Billboard had called “the revival of punk for a new generation” whatever _that_ was supposed to mean ( _Deja Entendu_ came out the same year, for goodness sakes, in what world was _Will it?_ even on the radar? This one, he thinks with still mild disbelief).

But their tour last summer with Sum 41 had been a success, more so than anyone, even Rhett the resident optimist, had anticipated. Sum 41’s album _Does This Look Infected_ , though good, hadn’t lived up to the expectations of _Chuck_ but fans still came out. And they’d loved Mythical Beasts.

Now there were even talks of them being in Warped Tour in the summer of 2005, a tour that boasted bands like Anti-Flag and Coheed and Cambria.

Link thinks he might pass out and only some if it is coming from the heat. He’s walked a far amount now and he turns at the next corner to loop back around. It’s not that he didn’t want this, that this wasn’t his dream, but he hadn’t really thought it would happen. He hadn’t thought anyone would be interested in forming a band, he hadn’t thought he would be able to pull an album together, he hadn’t thought anyone would sign them, he hadn’t thought his parents would let him (though begrudgingly, he admits) skip out on going to college to pursue music, hadn’t thought they’d open for one of the biggest punk bands in the country, hadn’t thought their album would even grace the top ten let alone top five, hadn’t thought they’d get their own headlining tour, hadn’t thought, hadn’t thought, hadn’t thought.

There were days when he loved it, of course. Days when he could feel the music coursing through his veins, when he could pick up his pencil and write a hook as if it was something he was born to do. But the days that he couldn’t, the days like today, took more out of him than he cared to admit.

Because maybe, maybe it was all a fluke.

( _Song idea: boy tricks the world_ )

When he returns Rhett has written out some sheet music, tapping his foot and humming as he tries to match the chord.

They’re a team, the two of them. There would be no music without Rhett’s guitar and no lyrics without Link’s words. Two halves of a whole.

“I wrote out some stuff, see what you think.” Rhett says when he sees Link standing in the doorway. He holds up a sheet of paper with scrawled chords and notes and some words written at the bottom of the page. Lyrics.

Maybe only one half is needed after all.


	3. Simple Design

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These people are fabrications, the story based on nothing except music. This chapter is specifically based on the Breaking Benjamin song "Simple Design" from their 2004 album We Are Not Alone.

_“How could you leave me behind?_

_It's alright, it's alright_

_'cause I know what you want_

_but you'll just have to wait._

_If I had it to give_

_I would give it away”_

 

“I really loved the drum solo you added at the end.” Greg says to Will as they’re packing up. They’ve been recording for days on end now, Link having finally written a couple of songs that he thought maybe, maybe were good enough for a new record.

Last week he and Rhett had shelved the song they were working on, finding it going nowhere, and Link somehow found it in him to write two other sets of lyrics.

( _Song idea: skirting the problem_ )

They didn’t mean anything, just empty words he’d strung together to fit Rhett’s melodies. But the band loved them. And so Link did too.

“Want to go get some coffee?” Rhett says as the two other men are leaving the studio. Link looks down and sees his guitar still strapped across his body, hands on the neck as if he’s about to play something else. “Wake you up a little?”

“I have been out of it recently.” Link mumbles, sliding the guitar off of him and placing it off to the side.

“Ever since the tour ended.”

“I don’t think that’s exactly true.” They leave together, hitting the wall of heat simultaneously. Link feeds off of Rhett just standing next to him and he reaches out and touches his arm. The taller man doesn’t react, used to Link needing physical interaction when they’re together. Rhett has a lot to give and Link takes and takes and takes.

( _Song idea: feeding off each other? No, too cannibalistic. Or too sexual._ )

“Whenever it happened, you’re not yourself.” Rhett says. “Wanna talk about it?”

Link could never, never say no to Rhett. It was a problem. “Just having trouble writing.”

“Writing what? Songs? What about the ones we just practiced together, those were amazing.” Rhett slows his strides, noticing Link falling behind. He reaches up as if to touch Link’s arm but doesn’t, instead shoving both of his hands in his pockets. Link does the same and the space between them feels like two opposing magnets.

“Those weren’t the same. There wasn’t any heart in them.”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.” They approach the coffee shop and look at each other for a split second (like the old days) and walk past it. They used to always make decisions like that, just by a look.

“There wasn’t any heart in them.” Link says again as they continue walking. “I wrote them because I had to, not because I was hit with any sort of… revelation or deep emotion I needed to release.”

“Songwriting isn’t always about revelation, brother. Sometimes you’re just writing.” So he doesn’t get it. The songs on the last record, the songs he’d written in the margins of his notes and on the backs of napkins, sounded the same to him as the ones that Link beat out of himself. It doesn’t make any sense to him how they couldn’t tell the difference between the ones he’d written with his heart and these, the ones he’d written with his mind. They just sounded like static.

“Hey,” Rhett reaches out and touches his arm. “You went away on me again.”

Link decides to brush past it. “I just worry.” Rhett is still touching his arm and they’ve stopped walking. Link’s skin is tingling.

( _Song idea: skin on skin on skin on skin_ )

“I know you do.” Rhett hums. “But you don’t have to. There’s no reason to worry. Your songs are amazing. You’re amazing.”

( _on skin on skin on skin_ )

“You’re just saying that so I don’t go insane.” His mouth is dry and he is so incredibly warm until Rhett takes his hand away and it feels as if his entire body is covered in ice.

“Doesn’t mean it isn’t true, brother.” There is a ringing in his ears. “Now, do you want to loop back around to get that coffee?”

  
***

That night Link gets in the shower at just past two in the morning. Rhett has been asleep since midnight, sprawled on the single twin bed in the spare room. They’d decided to switch off nights sleeping in the bed and on the floor. But that wasn’t why Link couldn’t sleep.

He doesn’t wash himself but stands under the stream of water, letting wash across his skin.

( _Song idea: what is happening to me?_ )

Link has always been an anxious person. It went even as far back as kindergarten when he would hold his poop in for as long as he physically could because the idea of it freaked him out. When he was left at home on his own for the first time in the fourth grade (for a grand total of ten minutes while his mother went to drop something off at the neighbor’s) he wound himself up so tight that he’d burst out crying when she walked back through the door.

Anxiety was not something that was new. What was new was who it was attached to. He’d never been anxious around Rhett; it was one of the reasons why they got on so early and so quickly. Rhett tended to say exactly what was on his mind; if he was upset at Link he said so, if he was happy he said so, if he was sad he said so. All the things he didn’t say, now, translated into ticks and movements that Link had memorized in their almost twenty years of friendship. That was how Link was able to go on stage and play the songs he’d written to growing crowds each and every day, how he was able to show anyone what he’d been writing in the first place. It was Rhett. Rhett, his mental health companion, so to speak. The one that would talk if Link needed to hear someone or stay quiet if Link needed space. But he never left.

But what if he did? And that, Link thinks, is the root of the problem.

It's just because he's afraid of the band leaving him. With Rhett dabbling in lyrics (not good ones, Link muses before he can stop himself, but give it time) and Link finding his creative juices running dry, he is afraid that the band will move on without him. Right?

But that doesn't make sense because they wouldn't. Rhett wouldn't. Rhett would  _never_. Yes, being expendable has always been an underlying fear that Link has found beneath his skin, but he has never been expendable to Rhett. Even when he has actively tried to find reasons for Rhett to leave him, even when he was in his darkest moments, he never found anything concrete enough to cling on to.

So that isn't it, not really, and once Link goes past the surface of what he'd thought the problem was, he finds that he is at a loss. Because there is something, something gnawing in his palms and behind his forehead. Something that is throwing him off, is making his hands shakier than usual, his words more jumbled than usual, and his creative flow completely halted. There is something just out of his reach and he believes that if he could just close his eyes and wish hard enough he could lung forward and grab it in his hands. But every time he comes up short.  
  
But he's lying. Even to himself, now, as he stands in the shower that is slowly getting colder against his skin. He is lying. He is conveniently forgetting who those songs had been about in the first place.

He turns off the water and goes to bed.


	4. Follow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These people are fabrications, the story based on nothing except music. This chapter is specifically based on the Breaking Benjamin song "Follow" from their 2004 album We Are Not Alone.The song instrumental used for the song Link is writing is Story of a Lonely Guy by Blink 182. New lyrics written by me to the same beat as the original song (which is a good one and you all should listen to it as well).

 

_ “You know my name _

_ You know my face _

_ You’d know my heart _

_ If you knew my place” _   
  


Link is in the room he and Rhett are sharing, guitar in his lap glaring at him. It was the song, the song they had been trying to write a week ago. He’d focused on writing other songs, on getting ready for the tour that was fast approaching (less than three weeks now, they’d be recording their follow up on the road). The lights are off except for a bedside lamp casting shadows on the walls. It’s just past eleven pm and the other Mythical Beasts aren’t back yet.

It was Greg’s birthday. The four of them had gone out to a dive bar close to where they’re staying in Brooklyn and Link had stumbled back alone with four drinks in his system and zero sense of direction. He’d made it after almost getting hit by a taxi and running into a woman who thought he was trying to grab her (he wasn’t) and tried to punch him in the face (she’d missed, but only because in his disoriented state he’d tripped over his own feet and stumbled to try and catch himself). And now he was here.

And he was angry.

Well, angry doesn’t exactly cut it. There’s something in his gut, like a ball of yellow energy, and it’s twirling faster and faster and faster, threatening to spin out of control.

Anger would be red. Or, at least, he would think. This was something different, this is irritation, indignation, petulence, discontent. It was morphing into a slam on this pride, on his talent, and he’d be damned if he was going to be bested by  _ feelings  _ and  _ emotions  _ when those were what he’d harnessed to be who he was in the first place. He just needed to corral them back again, beat them into submission. His emotions were nothing,  _ nothing  _ without him.

( _ Song idea: what happens when the muse is gone? _ )

He hisses out loud at the idea and presses any thought that could branch from it away. That’s not something he wants to touch.

“Fuck it.” He says aloud and it almost scares him how vicious he sounds. “Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it.” He repeats, pulling the guitar up and putting his fingers on the strings. “Fuck it.” He plays the chords that Rhett had been playing around with the other week. They sound like him (if a person could sound like music, but Link doesn’t follow that thought either). “Fuck it.” He says softer, playing it again. “Fuck it.”

What was the proverbial  _ it  _ then? Was it his fears of not being able to write something even if he was alone, even if he had no one staring at him from across the room? Or was it a declaration of defeat, of surrender?

Maybe all those songs he’d written weren’t him controlling his own emotions after all. Maybe it was the other way around. At this thought he decides to find the twirling yellow ball in his gut and let it go. No one is around, no one will see if he breaks just this once. He pushes his fingers harder on the strings and plays again, again, again. He ignores where his mind goes, when he doesn’t keep it in check, when he isn’t carefully compartmentalizing it all. He pretends not to notice who he thinks about as he repeats the motions, the music on a loop.

But then it sounds different. He plays it again, the same as he was before, but it sounds different now. He hears the harmony. He hums along and does it again, again, again.

It’s there, staring him in the face.

“You make me feel like I’ll explode any day. You have my heart and I don’t know what to say. I never asked for this, I never asked for you. I wish that I could go but I just follow you.” He says it so quietly that even he can barely hear himself but it’s there, etched into his skin like every other song he’s ever written. Now that it’s out of his mouth he’ll never forget it. The chorus has been woven before his very eyes.

He goes back through and sings it again, experimenting with different stressors and harmonies and it’s there. It’s all there in front of him. He just has to work back, figure out how the first verse would sound and then…

The door swings open and the first thing Link sees is a girl. She’s in low rise jeans and a crop tank top, her hair in a high ponytail that is being twirled by one of her fingers. The other hand is wrapped around… Rhett.

“Oh, sorry buddy, I didn’t know you’d be here.” He says, his head turned and leaning against the top of the girl’s head. She’s giggling wildly and Link doesn’t understand the joke.

“I can leave.” Link says, standing too quickly and stumbling out of the chair. His guitar crashes into his knee and he tries to just leave, leave, leave as quickly as possible.

He barely hears Rhett say “thanks, man” in his ear as he stumbles out of the room. They close the door behind them and he’s left in the hallway, his guitar heavy on his shoulders and his knee throbbing dully.

“I follow you.” He whispers to himself. He hears Greg and Will somewhere else in the house (upstairs?) and more giggling (what could possibly be so fucking funny?) and he wants to go to the studio but he doesn’t know if he could even get in if he even forced himself outside so he opts to go downstairs, away from the bedrooms and away from the giggling, to the living room and kitchen.

The townhouse is tall but narrow, with the living room and kitchen with a half bath on the first floor, one bedroom and a large bathroom on the second floor, two bedrooms on the third floor, and a master suite on the fourth with a small office and a master bath.  The first week they’d been here the owners of the house (Link was still unsure of who they were but decided it was irrelevant as long as they didn’t get kicked out because of it) had been around but they’ve since gone for the month to Hawaii (or California or something) leaving the entire four story house to them. They’d offered their master bedroom to one of them while they were away, since the arrangement of three other bedrooms forced Rhett and Link to share, but Link hadn’t jumped at the opportunity. The reasoning behind it didn’t matter.

He assumes he’ll probably be sleeping there tonight and he focuses instead on walking down the stairs without falling over. He’d forgotten how drunk he was until he stood up and now it felt like his head was in a bucket. He barely remembers leaving the room and making his way down the stairs once he sits down in the living room. They have a large leather sofa and two matching leather love seats. On the first night here he’d come down to the living room to get some water and found Rhett lounging on one of the love seats, looking out of one of the large windows at the dark street in front of the house. Link almost thought he was hallucinating since he’d thought for sure he’d seen Rhett asleep on the floor when he’d left the room but there he was, looking… like himself.

_ (Song idea: looking like an angel) _

_ (Edit: a girl looking like an angel) _

He’d gone into the kitchen and gotten a glass of water and came back in to see Rhett had shifted to look at him. He’d gone over without being asked, setting his water down on the coffee table. He hadn’t been going to sit on the loveseat with Rhett, was just going to lean on the arm and look out the window, but Rhett had beckoned him over and he went, sitting down on the edge of the seat.

“I won’t bite.” Rhett had said, pulling him in closer until Link was almost sitting in his lap. They’d sat like that in silence, looking outside at the single car that passed by every couple of minutes. Then they’d both gotten up and gone to bed without word.

Now Link was down here alone with a guitar that he wanted to smash into pieces. The yellow energy, he found, was slowly turning red. Or maybe green.

He could finish this first verse with that. And so he did. He played the chorus again, humming what he’d already written, and then switch it up for the verse. The chords weren’t right but the beat was there and that was all he needed to find the words.

“Push it down, fake a smile. Take a breath, leave it behind. I need to leave cause in a while. You’ll ask me what’s been on my mind. Please don’t ask, let me ignore. Let me pretend everything’s alright. I make my leave, you turn to stop me. Our eyes lock, I don’t leave tonight.”

He plays through the chorus again, his hands shaking on the strings, and he is reminded of the bad parts of writing with the energy in your gut: the overflow of emotion doesn’t just stop at the song writing. In stripping yourself raw for your art you’re left with the open wound even after the words are written.

He’s definitely raw now. He takes the guitar off and sets it to the side, his hands still shaking. He knows he should get up and get some water, knows he’ll feel the drinks in the morning if he doesn’t, but instead he brings his knees up to his chest and stares out the window at the complete and total darkness of midnight in Brooklyn.


	5. Firefly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These people are fabrications, the story based on nothing except music. This chapter is specifically based on the Breaking Benjamin song "Firefly" from their 2004 album We Are Not Alone.The song instrumental used for the song Link sings is Story of a Lonely Guy by Blink 182. New lyrics written by me to the same beat as the original song.

_“Now I'm lost in you_

_Like I always do_

_And I'd die to win_

_'Cause I'm born to lose”_

  


_There’s breath on his neck and a voice in his ear but it’s all muffled like he’s in water, like he’s six feet under but he doesn’t struggle, doesn’t move, just succumbs. There’s a name on his lips but he can’t focus enough to figure out what it is but it tastes sweet (words don’t have taste, he tries to remind himself, but if they don’t why does he feel giddy with it on his tongue?) and if he could just open his eyes, just look behind him, just figure out the name..._

 

“Hey, Link, Link.” There’s someone touching him and he finds himself almost leaning into it, like it’s still part of the dream. His name sounds soft and warm, like coming home. “Link, c’mon buddy.”

It’s Rhett.

( _Song idea: it’s always been_ ~~ _Rhett_ _you_~~ _her_ )

“You fell asleep on the couch.” Rhett explains as Link blinks, rubbing his eyes. “Your glasses fell off, you’re lucky you didn’t roll on top of them.” He’s holding them out to Link now and he takes them, putting them on slowly.

“Good morning to you too.” Link grumbles, sitting up. His neck aches and he doesn’t even want to think about what his hair looks like. “I figured you’d want privacy.” He adds quickly. He wonders if Rhett can hear the defensiveness in his voice.

If he does he lets it go. “Didn’t need it, brother. She ended up being a sentimental drunk, cried before we even kissed.”

Link hates this. He’s always hated hearing about Rhett’s… exploits. Not that there are many but there are enough. Rhett isn’t one to have meaningless sex, contrary to popular rocker belief, but he has been known to bring girls back to hotel rooms for a little fun from time to time. And then there was Kelsey… the Girlfriend. For over a year it had been Rhett and Kelsey featuring Link on the side. Which was fine, it was fine, it was just Link being jealous that he didn’t have a girl on his own side, too.

Definitely.

Not that either of them was a virgin and, god, Rhett is looking at him oddly now to show he’s been quiet for too long and he should say something.

“Sorry it didn’t end up working out.”

Rhett shrugs, standing up straight (had Link even noticed he’d been practically looming over him?) and goes into the kitchen. “Not every girl can work out.” He says over his shoulder, grabbing a glass out of the cabinet. “Were you working on a song?”

Link looks at the guitar sitting by the couch and shit, _shit_ he had been writing a song. The lyrics come back and hit him in the face and no, no, nope, he can’t tell Rhett what they are.

But why not? It doesn’t matter, right? It’s a hypothetical about a girl, a _girl_ that Link doesn’t even know. It’s like writing about a dream or a stranger, it’s _nothing._

_(Song idea: fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck)_

“Hey, bud.” Rhett snaps his fingers from the kitchen. “It’s not a trick question.”

“Just fiddling with that riff we were working on last week.” His mouth is dry and Rhett comes and sits down next to him on the couch, scooting his legs over slightly. He has two cups of water and he sits one down in front of Link on the coffee table. “I wrote a verse and the chorus.”

“Really?” Rhett’s eyes light up and Link feels some tension leave his shoulders. “That’s amazing, man! You’ll have to play it for us in the studio today.” Link doesn’t have a chance to reply before Greg comes stumbling down the stairs with Will close behind him. Rhett turns to them with a wide smile. “Rise and shine!” He shouts, both boys cringing.

“Jesus, Rhett, be kind to us hungover assholes will ya?” Greg moans, putting his hand to his forehead.

“Just let us get water in peace.” Will agrees, stumbling to the kitchen.

“Fine, fine, but apparently last night while we were all getting busy at the club, Link wrote some new lyrics.” Rhett turns to him and smiles and _god_ Link would be hurt by the phrasing if Rhett didn’t look so damn proud of him.

“I want to hear if you play it softly.” Will says, returning to the living room and lounging on one of the loveseats. Greg comes in and sits down on the floor, leaning against the wall and holding the cup of water to his chest.

Rhett hands Link the guitar. “C’mon, Link, at least share the chorus.” And he could never say no to Rhett.

Link situates the guitar in his lap and strums a couple of chords before going to the chorus, looping once before singing softly “he makes me feel like I’ll explode any day. He has my heart and I don’t know what to say. I never asked for this, I never asked for him. I wish that I could go but I’ll just follow him.”

There is silence after he finishes which is unusual. Usually one of them (Rhett) jumps in immediately with either praise or criticism (mostly praise) and they start working out the different parts and the rest of the song. But there is nothing.

And then it settles in what he’s sung and his body acts on it’s own and he’s standing, setting the guitar down, and practically sprinting out of the room. He doesn’t remember if he’d ever looked up, if he’d seen the looks on their faces but god, god he can’t get away fast enough and he goes into the first door he sees which is the half bath.

His hands are shaking as he locks the door and fuck, fuck, _fuck, fuck fuck fuck_ . Those hadn’t been the original lyrics, had they? He can’t remember now but surely, surely it had been in second person, the _you you you_ he always wrote about instead of the _him him_ **_him_ **. But now they all know, they all know, it’s there, it’s out there now.

( ~~ _Song_~~ _Idea: boy throwing himself out of a window_ )

There is a knock and fuck, fuck, fuck he has his back against the wall as far away from the door as possible and fuck, fuck, fuck. His entire body is shaking.

“Link.” It’s soft and it’s warm and it’s _Rhett_. “Link, are you okay?”  
“I don’t feel well.” God, does his voice crack?

“Link, it’s okay.” Rhett says. “It’s just a song.”

Something beside him shatters and Link has to turn to look at the mirror to make sure it was in his mind. His wide, teary eyes stare back at him. “It isn’t.” Link whispers and fuck, _fuck_. “It’s not just a song, Rhett.”

There is a shuffling, as if Rhett has sat down, his back against the door. Link slides down and sits on the floor.

“Do you like men?”

“ _Fuck_ .” Link swears, aloud this time. His hands are still shaking and his entire body feels cold, so cold and the tile on the bathroom floor is uncomfortable and his hair is in his face and fuck, fuck, _fuck_.

“Can I come in?” Rhett asks after a moment of silence. Link leans up high enough to unlock the door before sitting back down. Upon hearing the click Rhett shuffles and opens the door slowly. Link doesn’t want to see him but looks up anyway. Rhett rubs the back of his neck before turning and closing the door behind him and sitting down with his back against it. He’s a little too tall for the small space and his feet are a centimeter from touching Link’s toes. Link brings his legs closer to himself, hugging his knees to his chest.

Rhett doesn’t need to ask again before Link sighs a heavy “yes” and puts his head on his knees.

Fuck. _Fuck_ . It wasn’t something he even let himself think, wasn’t something he’d even admitted to _himself_ yet but of course, of course Rhett would be the first to know, even before himself.

Thankfully, Rhett says nothing. He allows Link to curl up into himself on the bathroom floor, his body still vibrating slightly and his mind reeling.

“I didn’t know.” Link finally whispers, not looking up. “I didn’t know, okay? It wasn’t something I’ve been keeping secret all of these years, it’s not some pent up thing I’ve been struggling with since I was five or anything, okay? It just happened recently, it just… it just happened.”

It’s true. He didn’t know when it happened, when he stopped looking at girls and started writing poems with _he_ and _him_ in his notebooks, didn’t know when he stopped finding girls as enticing as his male peers. It was something gradual that snuck up on him but then, _then_ there was the tour.

The tour. The Sum 41 cross country tour. Living with Greg, Will, and Rhett on a bus for an entire tour and hadn’t that been something. Link had known then, or was figuring it out. It wasn’t that he found himself sexually attracted to his bandmates (he shakes the thought again and again because no he didn’t find Will or Greg attractive so therefore...) it was that he didn’t find himself wanting people quite like they did.

Part of their infatuation with the groupies and the fans was probably fabricated for their ultra rockstar (re: macho) personas they donned while touring, but part of it was genuine. Rhett didn’t succumb to the _groupie madness_ as much as Greg and Will had (he hadn’t, that Link had known, slept with any of the girls) but he had let the guys know that he had, in fact, found them attractive in some way or another.

It’s not that Link was only looking at the male fans. It was that he wasn’t looking at any of them at all. He’d just been looking at....

But no, _no_ , fuck no, that’s not a can he wants to open, not right now.

Maybe it was because of how his body told him he was… that he liked men… maybe that was why it had taken him so long to figure it out…

( _Song idea: fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck_ )

“This is too much.” Link says, finally looking up at Rhett. “This is all too much.” It’s like entire truths are suddenly smacking him in the face, wanting attention, to be handled and dealt with and he can’t, he can’t, not this close to tour, not this close to their entire lives.

“It’s okay.” Rhett says and he’s a light, a beacon, a fucking firefly in Link’s dark world in that moment. “Everything is okay.”

“I didn’t know.” Link whispers, and that’s when the tears start to fall.

“It’s okay not to know.” Rhett says. “It’s okay to be confused and unsure and, hell, panicked. But you don’t have to be afraid.” He reaches out slowly and touches Link’s leg. “As long as I’m here you don’t have to be afraid. And I will always be here.”

Link tries to focus on the soft words coming from Rhett’s mouth or the warmth of Rhett’s hand on his leg but all he can focus on is the weight in his stomach, like a stone or a piece of asphalt weighing him down from the inside out.


	6. Forget It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These people are fabrications, the story based on nothing except music. This chapter is specifically based on the Breaking Benjamin song "Forget It" from their 2004 album We Are Not Alone.
> 
> I strongly urge people to listen to the songs these chapters are based off of; it might bring some new insight or depth to the writing. At worst, it's good rock music.

_ “I'm alive but I can surely fake it _

_ How can I believe when this cloud hangs over me _

_ You're the part of me that I don't wanna see” _

 

Link is in bed staring at the ceiling when the clock strikes midnight. Rhett has opted to take the master bedroom and hadn’t explained why.

It’s because he’s disgusted with him. Or, at least, that’s what Link’s running mind has decided. In the darkness it’s harder to get out of his own head.

They had exited the bathroom together after Link was able to compose himself and Greg and Will didn’t press the issue. They’d gone to the studio and recorded and later he and Rhett had sat down and finished the second verse and the bridge for the song (with Link using the you’s he’d missed the first time around). And that was it.

Link thinks he hears a knock on the door and he sits up slightly, seeing a shadow blocking the light coming in from the hallway. He doesn’t say anything, just watches until the shadow moves away. He wants to get out of the bed and open the door, wants to stop ( _ Rhett _ ) from walking away but he doesn’t. Because what will he say? What will either of them say?

Link lays back down, looking at the ceiling again. It’s a flat white above him and he suddenly misses his childhood home. They’d had what he’d lovingly referred to as popcorn ceiling (was that even the professional term?) and he used to spend hours staring at it and finding constellations. He’d trace them with his fingers, sometimes words and sometimes random images. Now he was looking at a blank slate.

( _ Song idea: soft rain on roofs, flashlights under blankets, times of the past _ )

When Link was young, seven and a half, his parents told him they were getting a divorce. They’d sat him down in the living room and talked and talked but even now the words just sound like static. He can see their faces when he closes his eyes, can see their lips moving, but the sounds out of their mouthes are muffled and distorted. 

That night he’d run away for the first time. It had been cold (January in North Carolina). He’d grabbed his backpack and packed an extra shirt and a pair of jeans and his portable cassette player his dad had passed down to him. He’d only had one cassette at the time, Back in Black by AC/DC which his dad had slipped him when his mom wasn’t looking (she always said the music his dad liked was too old for him but his dad thought no one was ever too young to be immersed in good rock and roll). He grabbed a granola bar he found on his desk and climbed out the window.

He made it as far as Rhett’s house, not realizing that was where he was headed until he was standing on the front step. He raised his hand to knock but hesitated, realizing that it was so late his parents would surely send him straight home.

So he’d climbed the fence into Rhett’s backyard, wondering if he could somehow climb up to Rhett’s window in the back of the house. When he looked up and saw the light was off he sat down in their backyard on the grass, his back to the house.

And he’d cried. He remembers now, eyes closed in this unfamiliar place, the feeling of the entire sky pressing down on him, that he was going to suffocate and die under the stars. It was the first time in his young life that he’d ever felt sorrow.

At the time he hadn’t known there was a word for it. All he’d known was that he couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t catch his breath, couldn’t think straight.

Then he’d gone back home, snuck back into his open window, and went to sleep.

He’d run away a handful of times after that, though not again until he was thirteen. He ran away three times during high school and almost missed his graduation because he’d felt the sickeningly familiar urge to run. It was somewhere in his blood, the idea in the back of his head that he should pack up and disappear, change his name and dye his hair and only wear contacts and get a job in the middle of nowhere working in a diner or a factory or a Walmart. Start new.

But every time he’d run away he’d ended up at the same place: Rhett’s. Some times it took longer for him to get there (when he was sixteen he made it to South Carolina by bus before going back, and the time before he almost bought a bus ticket all the way to New York City) but it was where he always ended up. Some stints he would knock, if the timing was right so his parents wouldn’t ask questions, but most times he just sat in the backyard, looking up at the stars and thinking about all the adventures he’d had at that house, in that backyard, on that grass.

He’d had his first kiss there. It was with Kelsey Gibson, they had both been twelve years old. She’d had blonde hair and blue eyes that almost perfectly matched his and they’d kissed under the stars at Rhett’s thirteenth birthday party (it was the first year he was allowed to invite girls and it had been a very exciting affair). Her lips had been wet and soft and tasted like chapstick and she’d pulled away from him giggling after ten seconds of sitting completely still with their lips pressed together.

He didn’t wake up the next morning with stumble on his face or hair on his chest or a drop in his voice. Everything had been the same.

Except, was it? He’d thought maybe the reason his heart didn’t skip a beat or his brain didn’t go mushy was maybe, maybe he hadn’t liked Kelsey. Maybe he should’ve tried to kiss Leane or Ashley or...

( _ Song Idea: kissing a boy _ )

He opens his eyes because there, there it is. He never lets himself get this far, never lets himself finish any thought that might end in the truth.

His feet are tingling in that familiar feeling. He wants to get up and grab his bag and slip out the front door and run, run far enough that he can’t think past the burning in his lungs. Fuck the album, fuck the band, fuck  _ everything _ .

But Rhett’s house is miles upon miles away and Rhett might as well be in his old bedroom with his light off because Link feels like he’s seven and a half again looking up at a dark window in the dead of night.

So instead of running he is forced, for the first time in his twenty one years of life, to face something he would really, really rather not.

He’d already, in some part of his brain, accepted that he liked men. It was something he couldn’t necessarily ignore, especially after finding himself thinking of… other things while losing his virginity to Amanda his senior year of high school. He’d never necessarily confronted it in himself before, mostly because he found it easier to just bury it, hide it, never deal with it.

But now there was something new. Well, not new necessarily, because looking back on it it had always been there. It had been why he’d realized he liked men at all, why he hadn’t tried to date Kelsey or had ignored Amanda’s calls, why he didn’t wish he’d kissed Leane or Ashley because he’d…

He’d wanted to kiss Rhett.

( _ Song Idea: shattered glass _ )


End file.
